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What does it feel like to have a computer webcam surgically implanted in your skull?
It hurts, Wafaa Bilal told AOL News.
And who better than he to know? A month ago, he underwent surgery to do exactly that -- install a small, Internet-connected camera into the back of his head.
The pain has gone down by a significant amount, but the healing process is still ongoing, says Bilal. I feel the camera in my skin, even though the majority of the pain is gone.
And why exactly did he do this? Why else? -- for art.
Bilal is one of 23 artists whose works were commissioned as part of the grand opening of Mathaf: The Arab Museum of Modern Art in Doha, Qatar.
For a project called The Third I, Bilal -- a professor of photography at New York University -- will wear his newly implanted camera, dubbed the 3rdi, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, for the next year.
The project's website explains it clearly: The 3rdi makes a technological apparatus part of my body and distributes the recorded content openly within space using the Internet.
Essentially, Bilal has become the world's first Internet-connected cyborg. But for the professor, it's not just an exercise in inducing shock in the public at large or spreading his creative wings. It's also about documenting the world around -- and, well, behind -- him.
I was exiled from Iraq during the first Gulf war, the professor said. I left everything behind. I regretted not having any record of where I left.
I had this idea when I settled, but have waited for the right time to implement it.
Bilal explained that technological considerations forced him to wait until now to start the project.
To have a persistently connected, truly mobile computer has only recently become possible, he said.
The 3rdi is connected via cable to a small, portable computer contained in a satchel that Bilal wears everywhere he goes. The computer automatically connects to wireless Internet hot spots when in proximity, and if there aren't any, it uses a 3G cellular modem as a backup.
The picture-taking process is all live.
You can see what's going on behind me at any moment, live on the project website, he said.
The camera records every second of every day. The footage is stored on the portable computer's hard drive, and the custom software written for this project selects one frame every minute to upload to the 3rdi.me website.
In addition to the website, photos taken from the back of Bilal's head are displayed on LCD monitors at the Told/Untold/Retold exhibition at the Arab Museum of Modern Art.
On the website, viewers can search through archived footage and are encouraged to tag any image in which they appear in the background.
It's part of the process that people will be able to tag themselves even if they're not in the image, he told AOL News. It's a social experiment to see how people behave -- both in front of and behind the camera.
My job as an artist is to be a mirror of our social condition, he said. I won't impose my ideas on people while they're involved in my platform -- physically or digitally.
For Bilal, one of the captivating parts of the project is observing the ways people act when they're on camera and when they're off camera.
Some people act very differently when a camera's near them, he said. Cameras force us to lose subjectivity and behave differently.
With his 3rdi camera automatically taking photos of the world behind him, Bilal's endeavor raises interesting questions about how connected -- or disconnected -- a photographer can be from the act of picture taking.
Cameras and images can never be objective -- we encode every image we take in as humans. We assign meaning to it, we process it and we make decisions accordingly. The camera? It can only see as far as its lens. What it captures is not thought about or processed. It just is.
It's been a month since the surgery, and Bilal says he's already gotten used to it.
The camera has physically altered the way I go about my life, he said, noting that he no longer sleeps on his back, and when he rides in a car, he cannot put his head against a headrest.
Story link: http://www.aolnews.com/2010/12/27/meet-wafaa-bilal-the-worlds-first-internet-connected-photo-t/
It hurts, Wafaa Bilal told AOL News.
And who better than he to know? A month ago, he underwent surgery to do exactly that -- install a small, Internet-connected camera into the back of his head.
The pain has gone down by a significant amount, but the healing process is still ongoing, says Bilal. I feel the camera in my skin, even though the majority of the pain is gone.
And why exactly did he do this? Why else? -- for art.
Bilal is one of 23 artists whose works were commissioned as part of the grand opening of Mathaf: The Arab Museum of Modern Art in Doha, Qatar.
For a project called The Third I, Bilal -- a professor of photography at New York University -- will wear his newly implanted camera, dubbed the 3rdi, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, for the next year.
The project's website explains it clearly: The 3rdi makes a technological apparatus part of my body and distributes the recorded content openly within space using the Internet.
Essentially, Bilal has become the world's first Internet-connected cyborg. But for the professor, it's not just an exercise in inducing shock in the public at large or spreading his creative wings. It's also about documenting the world around -- and, well, behind -- him.
I was exiled from Iraq during the first Gulf war, the professor said. I left everything behind. I regretted not having any record of where I left.
I had this idea when I settled, but have waited for the right time to implement it.
Bilal explained that technological considerations forced him to wait until now to start the project.
To have a persistently connected, truly mobile computer has only recently become possible, he said.
The 3rdi is connected via cable to a small, portable computer contained in a satchel that Bilal wears everywhere he goes. The computer automatically connects to wireless Internet hot spots when in proximity, and if there aren't any, it uses a 3G cellular modem as a backup.
The picture-taking process is all live.
You can see what's going on behind me at any moment, live on the project website, he said.
The camera records every second of every day. The footage is stored on the portable computer's hard drive, and the custom software written for this project selects one frame every minute to upload to the 3rdi.me website.
In addition to the website, photos taken from the back of Bilal's head are displayed on LCD monitors at the Told/Untold/Retold exhibition at the Arab Museum of Modern Art.
On the website, viewers can search through archived footage and are encouraged to tag any image in which they appear in the background.
It's part of the process that people will be able to tag themselves even if they're not in the image, he told AOL News. It's a social experiment to see how people behave -- both in front of and behind the camera.
My job as an artist is to be a mirror of our social condition, he said. I won't impose my ideas on people while they're involved in my platform -- physically or digitally.
For Bilal, one of the captivating parts of the project is observing the ways people act when they're on camera and when they're off camera.
Some people act very differently when a camera's near them, he said. Cameras force us to lose subjectivity and behave differently.
With his 3rdi camera automatically taking photos of the world behind him, Bilal's endeavor raises interesting questions about how connected -- or disconnected -- a photographer can be from the act of picture taking.
Cameras and images can never be objective -- we encode every image we take in as humans. We assign meaning to it, we process it and we make decisions accordingly. The camera? It can only see as far as its lens. What it captures is not thought about or processed. It just is.
It's been a month since the surgery, and Bilal says he's already gotten used to it.
The camera has physically altered the way I go about my life, he said, noting that he no longer sleeps on his back, and when he rides in a car, he cannot put his head against a headrest.
Story link: http://www.aolnews.com/2010/12/27/meet-wafaa-bilal-the-worlds-first-internet-connected-photo-t/
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